Augment Humankind
What truly makes us human? Is it what we build, what we feel, how we love or why we exist? What does it mean to even be human in an increasingly technological world and can we even harness the power of technology to further our own sense of humanity?
If you ask me, I believe that we can. And it is my mission to explore mine, and your, humanity alike. While current AI technologies have their limits, they can potentially be new ways to open our minds to new worlds, perspectives, and imaginations that we didn’t even know existed within us.
AI should empower our human taste
Augment Humankind is a solo AI-assisted human practice as a moniker that I use to build experiences and new realities. In other words, I do my best attempt at empowering my human tastes using AI technologies, building on my experiences as a data science graduate, data professional, and a lifelong artist.
Ideate. Create. Ruminate.
Ideate
In my work, I start with ideation. I ask myself what I want to communicate with a new piece and I explore different ways of sketching things out before I make a single mark. As a trained data scientist, I use my technical expertise in AI and data systems to inform my AI art practice. I often draw from my existing digital and physical pieces to gain new insights about myself. I find myself drawn to "finding myself" in the non-pretentious sense of analyzing the questions that I ask local AI chatbots, the responses to my inquiries, and how I interact with AI tools in general.
Create
After the deep reflection of the ideation process, I start to create. Oftentimes, I don’t even come with a strict plan: only an idea and how I plan to communicate it. AI makes this faster and more instant, which works well with my ADHD and autistic perspectives. I don’t like an implementation? I simply press the “Undo” button or add a new prompt towards chain of thought. But, as easy as digital art and AI art tools make it to create and iterate, my taste is the ultimate filter and distiller.
Ruminate
Deep reflection is my love language, so I think of new ways to see myself. Similarly, I think of new things to do with what has been created, what needs to be improved and what I can do to improve a piece, and what to leave alone. I often pursue my work as a pipeline of sorts. The data science pipeline deals with the process of distilling raw data into insights from cleaning to preprocessing to modeling and visualization. This simplified notion mimics how human artists pursue our work. While AI may be one of many tools that I use, I have the context of experience with visualizations, a developed creative taste, and the will to create. These factors all work in my favor when ruminating on my work and allowing myself to wander, explore new ideas, and develop existing ones.